If a guy has a harem, but only acknowledges the love of one girls in that harem (for example Kirito and Asuna from SAO), is it really NTR when an unacknowledge girl (let’s say Suguha) is mindbroken into a loving sex slave by someone else? I mean the guy was never going to screw her anyways, right? Shouldn’t NTR only apply if the guy was saving himself for the girl or they were already a loving couple?
I consider the scenes of Kotonoha and Sekai with another guy in School Days to be NTR, so yes.
So the girl is not really in a relationship with the guy? Then she can’t be NTR’ed. Being in a relationship is a two-way street.
For the uninformed, NTR = …?
NTR is an abbreviation for netorare. It’s the genre where the love interest or lover of the main hero is screwing another guy and the main hero can’t really do anything about it or is completely unknowing of the situation. Themes range from the love interest willingly cheating on the hero to being rape or brainwashed.
True NTR usually ends with the lover transferring her feelings to the non-hero, or the lover being returned to the main hero after she’s been broken (impregnated with the other guy’s child, left as a slutty psychological wreck, etc).
Which is why I agree with your thought in the original post; it can’t be NTR, because she’s not actually in a relationship. If that’s NTR, then would the guy not be ‘cheating on her’ if he goes out with someone else? That’s yandere talk 
@sanahtlig said:
I consider the scenes of Kotonoha and Sekai with another guy in School Days to be NTR, so yes.
The thing with School Days (haven’t gotten Shiny Days yet, so I don’t know about it) is that Makoto is so wishy-washy that it’s almost a case of “any manko in a storm” 
. (The paths that end with Hikari are a perfect example of this.) So for most paths through the game, it is more that he isn’t with a certain girl “at the moment” than he isn’t with a certain girl.
Makoto simply likes both Kotonoha and Sekai. Thus if either of them hook up with someone else, it’s felt as NTR.
But it’s not NTR unless either of them was in a relationship with Makoto, and then starts cheating on him. That’s not what we’re talking about.
Let me pose another situation to ponder: Is it really incest if you aren’t really related?
No, it isn’t. It might feel a lot like it is, but it’s not. Likewise, if someone clones you, then yes, it would be. Genetics are the key determining factor here.
… Why, yes, I am a geek. How could you tell?
I’ve heard the argument that “incest” is to specify the social taboo, while “inbreeding” should specify the biological taboo.
Under this argument, genetic siblings would have incest and inbreeding. Adopted siblings would have incest, but not inbreeding.
@Nandemonai said:
But it’s not NTR unless either of them was in a relationship with Makoto, and then starts cheating on him. That’s not what we’re talking about.
The key to NTR is the feeling of jealously, felt by the protagonist and by the reader through the protagonist. The actual circumstances–whether is the girl is actually “cheating”–are less important. If a story revolves around the protagonist’s unrequited love interest hooking up with another guy, that’s an NTR game.
But if it’s unrequited, why would the protagonist feel jealous if she hooks up with someone else?
Well NTR is also supposed to have an impact on the player/reader/viewer.
I guess it would be like a series where the main hero doesn’t pursue a harem ending, picks an official girl, and how it makes fans of the girl(s) that didn’t win super upset. Love Hina and Nisekoi for example. However using that example, if the other girls from Love Hina or Nisekoi were shown in a “10 years later” chapter and were married to other men from the main hero, I wouldn’t consider it NTR. I mean, are they supposed to NEVER marry anyone else if the main hero has zero desire to have a sexual/marital relationship with them? I think that’s a bit unfair.
On a side note: to be honest I always thought the threesome ending in School Days was the canon ending though.
@Nargrakhan said:
… using that example, if the other girls from Love Hina or Nisekoi were shown in a “10 years later” chapter and were married to other men from the main hero, I wouldn’t consider it NTR. I mean, are they supposed to NEVER marry anyone else if the main hero has zero desire to have a sexual/marital relationship with them? I think that’s a bit unfair.
Ha! That took me on an interesting train of thought. If eternal celibacy is the punishment for not earning “canon girl” status, maybe somewhere far in the wilds of Japan, there’s a monastery where visual novel and anime heroines who didn’t get the guy live out their lives as nuns. We’ll call it “St. Vindictive’s Monastery for Spurned Best Girls” – donations welcome!